Meet Helena Nabero Zeberi

Helena Nabero Zeberi  is 31 years old, a married women with 5 children (2 boys and 3 girls).  Like most people living in the Wulu area, Helena is from the Beli tribe.  She lives in Doteku Village, part of the Domoloto payam located 23 miles away from Wulu town. 

Helena lives in the small house with two floors that you can see behind her in the photograph.  The walls are made of mud blocks produced locally, and the roof of bamboos thatched with grass.    It is her father’s house – she and the children have lived there since her husband died two years ago. He was shot dead by his cousin in December 2016.  

Since the death of her husband in 2016 Helena says she has not felt well because it is such a struggle to look after her children – to find enough money to feed them, dress them, pay school fees, pay for any medical treatments, and other such basics that the family needs to sustain a reasonable living standard.

Like Mary, who we met in the February edition of the Shelswell News, she spends the whole day working. She wakes up early in the morning, digs in the family farm in the morning (and for ‘farm’, think more ‘vegetable patch’ or ‘allotment’), collects fire wood, goes to grind the meal in the local mill, fetches water for cooking, cooks the one meal that the family have each day, fetches water for the children to wash and prepare the beds for them to sleep.  At the end of the day, she doesn’t feel like a human.

Helena says that if they have ox-ploughs it will help the Domoloto Women Farming Group to achieve their objectives of:

1.   Supporting other church activities such as building the church congregations and Bible study school.

2.   Constructing a girls’ primary school because if their girls are educated, they may not suffer like them. 

3.   Constructing a Women’s maternal health center so that women have less problems during pregnancy, during delivery and after delivery.

She concluded that agricultural activity is the only real source of income to support women’s activities in their locality.  

Sending money to South Sudan is no easy matter and it took us several attempts to find a way to do this.  The good news is that we successfully made our first donation of 600 USD to the project in February, and it has been successfully collected by Philip, the Development Officer for the Wulu Diocese.  It is now safely deposited in the Diocese Bank Account with a local bank.  He is making arrangements to purchase the first oxen and ox plough, and has promised to send us some photographs in due course. 

If you would like to make a donation, please send it to Jeremy Coke Smyth, Benefice Treasurer, Yew Tree Cottage, Mansfield Yard, Fringford in an envelope clearly marked DWFP.  Cheques should be made payable to ‘Shelswell Group of Churches’.  Thank you . 

Alice Goodall